Samba

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Samba is a free file and printer sharing service for Linux platforms, and is the primary way you can share files between Windows and Linux PCs.

Features

Samba lets you share files and printers using a command-line interface, or recent versions of most Linux platforms allow you to share files easily using the GUI interface. From the command line, you can use the smbclient utility or the smbmount command to connect to the server and mount the shared folder in a local directory.

Samba runs as two separate daemons (the Linux term for services):

  • smbd is the primary file and printer sharing service.
  • nmbd handles the name service, that allows you to map from a computer name instead of using the IP address.

Samba can usually be configured with the smb.conf file, normally located in the /etc/ directory, but sometimes in the /etc/samba/ folder instead. You can restart Samba with the following command:

/etc/init.d/samba restart


See Also


List of Linux Components v
Features Samba
Applications gedit vim
Security iptables